Diffs for acceptance become out of sync with committed code when switching branches

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Diff view that is supposed to auto-accept when changes have been committed often gets out of sync if I commit the changed files in my separate iTerm window, then do something like switch branches, and then bring the Cursor window back to the foreground. I assume something is happening like Cursor isn’t actively detecting the commit activity while its not the active window or something and then gets confused when there is a different branch checked out. The effect is that I get all these “orphaned” diff views where hitting “Reject” ends up modifying the file because its trying to put it back to the original state it was in in the branch where it was modified (I think). Then the “Review Next File” button in the top right confusingly takes me through different review states. Like for example it might take me to a file I long ago committed on a different branch and at the top show “1 of 1”, but if I dismiss that change I might end up in a diff view for a different forgotten file that maybe now shows something like “1 of 3” at the top because it was from a different chat sesssion.

In general it gets really hard to manage the fact that chats aren’t explicitly tied to the branches they originated from. Both me and the agent get confused when the wrong branch is checked out when I come back to a previous chat. It would be nice if there was some association between the chat and the branch. Maybe this is better if you use git within the Cursor application but I do all my git operations from a separate Terminal.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Start a session and make some changes but dont accept them in the editor
  2. Use a separate terminal application to commit the changes (maybe also make sure the terminal is full screen so cursor window is not visible)
  3. Check out a different branch in the terminal
  4. Return to cursor
  5. Diff for files will still sometimes show up even though the changes were committed

Expected Behavior

Diff should go away as soon as I commit something, even if its done outside of Cursor.

Operating System

MacOS

Version Information

Version: 2.5.25
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 7150844152b426ed50d2b68dd6b33b5c5beb73c0
Date: 2026-02-24T07:17:49.417Z
Build Type: Stable
Release Track: Default
Electron: 39.4.0
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.0
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

3

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue. The review UI doesn’t always track git actions correctly, especially when they happen in an external terminal like iTerm in your case. A few users are seeing the same thing:

Current workaround: close the chat where the changes were made. If that doesn’t help, fully restart Cursor. That should reset the review state.

Part of this was fixed in past updates, but some edge cases still reproduce, especially external terminal plus branch switching. The team is aware, and I’ve added your report to help with prioritization.

About linking chats to branches, that’s an interesting idea. Feel free to post it as a separate feature request if you want.

5

Thanks Dean, posted the feature suggestion here